


Black as Pitch

by One_Day



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Dark, I don't know how to tag this, Mentions of Suicide, Mild Gore, Not Canon Compliant, Ok um..this is not a happy fic, introspective, or descriptions that are kind of gory?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 16:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Day/pseuds/One_Day
Summary: They speak of hope and light. Such things are lies.They speak of the future. There is nothing but the end.





	Black as Pitch

The quiet is soothing in its vastness.

Nothing echoes, not even the whisper of something foreboding that Lucina knows so well. She thinks it's the kind of silence that exists in one’s mind, where a pin dropping would still make no noise, so quiet as if to be loud. And all around is dark; deep, black dark, that swallows up everything in its hot, drooling maw as if to consume even the day itself. There is no light, no stormy red sky or roaring beast upon the earth, no more, nothing but the pulsating and the burning and the pounding in her ears.

It's as if every breath on the surface of the world is stopped, quieted. Waiting in fear or maybe ceasing to exist at all. Lucina can see nothing (though she blinks to reaffirm), nothing at all but the jet black and it is cold now and no pain but -- _breath_. Breath in her lungs and in her chest and in her chest quivering like a tiny animal in its iron-wrought cage, helpless to save itself but desperate anyway.

She feels like a rat, or worse, a cockroach, struggling not even to fight but to breathe, to suck in air (clean, clear, stifling, is no matter) just once before everything ends. Her father is gone and her mother - perhaps her mother never was. The hands stroking in her long hair and smearing her tears do not belong to her mother, just a nameless woman like all the rest who flit around the castle like bees and hang the colored linens up to dry (Though perhaps Lucina should not think so low of them for they have given her food and clothed her, and did not desert, not like her, not like lowly vermin with their tails between their knees).

In the nebulous darkness, she remembers blinking bright eyes and an amalgam of different voices that she knows she knows, pleading with her, shouting, moaning, clinging to her skin and her hair and her teeth, their fingers slipping and nails leaving scratches in their wake.

We believed in you, they say.

But you failed.

And she knows. She knows she has failed like the beaten dog that she is, remembers standing in terror, sweat running in blinding rivulets into her eyes and soaking through her shirt. When she needs to, she cannot even grip her sword ( _her_ sword? It feels wrong, and for the first time she doubts that it does belong to her). Fingers weak, too weak, and small, easily snapped and crushed into shimmering white paste, bones and all (there would be no blood, for red is too courageous a color to stain her body now, only monotones left in her veins).

The only thing she knows is the world shrinking and collapsing into one point within her, one word, and that word is fear.

The stretch of endless sky is like skin, clouds purpled and bruising. All around Lucina there are screams and cries, sickeningly guttural in their sounds. They belong to no human. It is impossible. No man or woman could bring forth such a noise, so full of despair with all strength beaten out.

Towers - no, whole castles - fall to pieces, spires piercing the earth, bricks crumbling like soft pastries turned sharp, and some part of her is buried with the rubble.

A voice says to her, “It is over, little one”.

It cackles in all its distorted echoing but Lucina has sunk, kneeling on her knees and eyes closed. It is a relief to perish. Should she be gutted like a fish before her army and dressed with her blood and entrails, she would suffer, but no, this is a golden death. It is instant and painless and it is reprieve. It comes after so much, so much screaming over and over and over, her throat hoarse and dry and raw, that she cannot ask for anything but a break, because never, under any circumstances, can a suffering soul ask for an increase in pain. The scars wrought across every inch of her tell her so. They whisper in soothing voices, telling her to surrender so that she may never again feel her own sinews tearing apart or the cold of a loved one’s body in the rain, no time for graves, no time for flowers, no time for nothing except hurtling inevitably towards the end.

But it is death, and thus, she cannot help but hate it, shirk away from it, cling to whatever is left around her, whether it be flesh or pulverized cobblestones. Foolishly like her father, who in the end had that lesson pounded into him too.

Hope will never die.

What bullshit. But she repeats it like a mantra until she can convince herself that it could be true. (In another time perhaps, where her mother is real and her father and friends do not impale themselves upon their own spears. Maybe then).

So now, she is punished. Everything is painted black, even her tongue and her eyes. She chokes on it, retches into a space that she cannot see, and inhales filthy, stinking, scorching air. It is the only kind of air she knows.

Nothing changes here, wherever here is, and upon considering, Lucina realizes it does not matter. Ghosts don't haunt her in the nothingness. But the living do, so she haunts herself.

Perhaps Grima knows she doesn't deserve an end like death, and that is why she is made to relive it all, painful frame by painful frame as what is left of her brain conjures the memories forth to play behind her eyelids.

Or perhaps she is being reborn, giving up her thoughts to become someone knew. It could be her birthday. She could wake up in a soft bed with smiling faces over her, telling her the battle is done, showering her with petals and confetti. Her mother would be there, patting her hair and singing in a soft voice, and she could be a princess where it really mattered.

Lucina waits, and nothing changes. A short bark of hysterical laughter falls from her lips and is immediately stolen by the blackness. The sound never reaches her ears.

There is nothing she can do, not anymore, so she curls into herself, burrowing her face into her knees, and cries.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 1 AM and made myself sad thinking about the bad timeline...


End file.
